Hah! I never know Mario coined the term, and I was living in NY at the time.
I was working for the NY Conservative Party as a volunteer in 1968, and though we did not campaign for Wallace, I was sensitive to his use of the term.
He was also famous for saying “There’s not a dimes worth of difference” between the two parties - when Nixon was running against Humphrey. He would have made a good tea partier.
Which word?
That would be fine, but you are the only one arguing with me who cops to that unabashedly. Others are taking umbrage at the accusation (and indeed, treating it as an accusation, rather than shrugging it off as a “feature”). I would be happy to have the debate on those terms, but there are more people denying the “riff raff” thing is true (and implicitly acknowledging that it would be a “bug” if it were true) than there are taking your defiant position.
Read his post again. Maybe you’ll get it, but I’m not holding my breath.
I’m right there with him. That’s basically been my position throughout the thread, as it has been of many others.
People might be denying that they live in the suburbs because they are racists, or because they hate people that are different than them or the other silly accusations flying around. But I don’t hear many people denying that they live in the suburbs because they want to live among other people like them: That are law abiding, with good incomes and the same lifestyles and interests.
Try rephrasing what it was you were trying to say in your mis-understood post. Maybe if you rephrase it and I read what you think you meant it would help me understand what your post was intended to mean.
Because this:
Is a fair summary of this:
It’s a brief summary, and doesn’t mention the money aspect of your point, but it seems to be what your point was.
What was it that you meant by bringing up the possibility that public schools can be a positive vs private schools when getting into good colleges?
Even if that’s true, shouldn’t parents send their kids to the place they would get the best education, not try and game the system into just getting well positioned for admission to Harvard even if it means going to a poorly performing school?
“Ivy League universities recognize that it’s harder for kids to do well in a public school”
Seems to me my spurce showed that it was easier to do well in public schools (getting in the top 15% is less of a struggle, and some studies have found test scores higher in public schools when adjusting for SEC etc.). The one counselor was quoted as saying that if you aren’t in the top ten percent at a private school, you should transfer to a public school (which advice would empty private schools if universally followed). Still not seeing where the “harder to do well” bit is coming from.
Ah, now I see the disconnect. You’re interpreting “do well” as “finish in the top X% of the class”. That’s not how I was reading it. I interpreted “do well” as “get a quality education”.
Of course kids of equal ability will be lower in the class standings in a private school. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t educated as well. It just means they were up against tougher competition.
Make sense?
No, because the same post that was interpreted this way also contains information about public school students doing better on test scores.
Does to me; that was a big piece of my point with the scholarship anecdote. Even though I was barely in the top 25% at my school, for scholarship purposes at a major public university, I was reckoned to be equivalent to the top 15% at any other school.
There’s something going on in the thread that I think bears mentioning- a lot of the progressive side is talking theory, while the opponents are talking practical solutions. For example, a lot of things sound good in theory like mixing things up and having a very diverse school with all ethnic and socio-economic groups, but when it’s YOUR kids potentially going to that school, you start to get a lot more critical about it; things like diversity stop being as important as educational quality and academic rigor.
Well that’s just silly. I don’t think anybody reasonable actually would argue that public schools produce results as good as private ones.
Are you seriously arguing this?
America has the best education system in the world, in Colleges and Universities, which are privately run. The public schools are a train wreck. People argue about the reasons but I didn’t think anyone was actually in denial about it.
So what really happened is that you couldn’t conceive of this being possible, therefore you couldn’t conceive that my post was making that point and instead ascribed the opposite assertion to it. Okay, gotcha.
If you go back and look at the post we are arguing about, within the block quoted text from the Wall Street Journal article is the following sentence: “New studies have suggested that public-school students often tested as well or better than their private school peers.”
So yes, I do find this believable. I think this is exactly why charter schools have not done as well as many of their proponents have predicted: you don’t just replicate private school methods with the same group of students and get “private school results”. It also shows the flipside as to why private schools can get such seemingly great test score averages. When a bunch of professors, doctors, and lawyers send their kids to a school, they could probably just have the janitor teach class and still get an aggregate set of test scores that most public schools could only dream of achieving even with the best possible teaching.
The question is whether, when you factor out this selection bias, the private schools still come out ahead; and while people like you take that as a given, clearly actual research casts doubt on that assumption. Sorry to burst your bubble, guys.
But okay, maybe it is not necessary for these private schools to actually educate anyone better. Maybe the networking bone talked about will actually help private school kids get ahead in life even without learning more than they would in public school… I have yet to see anyone respond though to my contention that this exposes the conservative ideal of a bootstrapping meritocracy as a pipe dream.
Oh, and do you really think America’s universities are all privately run? Or that there aren’t a whole slew of publicly run universities that have world-renowned research going on? Wow.
Let me try and reason this out.
Liberals hate suburbs.
The liberal stance on abortion is pro.
Suburbs are full of soccer moms…
Wow, maybe America’s hate of soccer goes a smidge too far.
Your post was vague and several people mis-understood it. Next time be more clear, especially if you are posting something so over the top controversial. You didn’t even comment on that point. It was buried in your cite.
You call this a gotcha? Sure. Whatever. I take pride in the fact that I can be honest enough to admit when I misunderstood something. At least I finally figured out what it was that you meant, despite you being so unclear as to your meaning that several people completely didn’t understand you.
First of all, it’s silly to claim the private schools don’t have better results than public. If this is true, than a whole lot of very intelligent people are wasting their money, and I don’t believe that for a second.
I don’t care if the reason the private schools are better is because of better methods, or because kids do better when surrounded by peers who are all more intelligent and have a desire to learn and parents who support them. If the results are better, does it matter?
That’s because that’s a silly straw man of what conservatives believe. Of course, going to good schools and having wealthy parents will help you go farther in life. Do you have a single example from anywhere of a conservative disputing this?
That’s doesn’t mean our society isn’t a meritocracy, especially considering many other places in the world. Even with smart parents and a good school a lazy person isn’t going to go as far as a hardworking person who goes out and works hard when they graduate. Mark Zuckerberg probably wasn’t going to homeless no matter how lazy he was in Life, but he only is a billionaire now because he started something big and worked hard at it.
Yes. I actually am unaware of publicly run universities.
:rolleyes:
Don’t be snippy just because people can’t figure out what you mean and start straw manning my posts. You can be better than this.
Who gives a shit about research? I’m talking about educating people. And yes, there are plenty of good public universities, but they are generally highly subsidized. I know UMASS and UNH both are. Take away that taxpayer money and see what happens. Even still, the top tier schools are mostly private.
But I had already argued a similar case repeatedly in this thread. For example:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16573094&postcount=497
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16577014&postcount=523
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16581034&postcount=548
“Gotcha” in the sense of “okay, whatever dude”. Not in the sense of a trap sprung shut.
I find it funny that you don’t think affluent people waste their money, no matter how intelligent they may be. But “waste” is a subjective term. Maybe what we should say is that in paying private school tuition, they are purchasing a Veblen good.
It would appear that you also don’t care whether the results are empirically better, only that they are to you axiomatically better.
I would guess most of the people who post on this board do, as well as the experts who rate the American university system as the best in the world. Honestly, I am fairly stunned that you would say something like that.
I am sorry, but it is hard not to laugh at some of the things you are saying. Take away taxpayer money and see how well a state university does? Ummm…yeah. Does that mean the US Marine Corps is not at all formidable, because they would be a far less effective fighting force without taxpayer funding? LOL
ETA: Just to remind you: we were comparing private schools for children with public schools for children. I don’t think anyone disputes that public schools would do an atrocious job (if they existed at all) and have no chance of competing with private schools if they did not receive taxpayer subsidy. So I think you may have just lost track of your argument there.
It’s very interesting that you would equate getting a private education for your kids with buying a Rolls Royce or other extravagance.
My point is: Who cares? If my kid gets a prestigious job like McKinsey or a summer internship at a top lawfirm, who cares if it’s because they actually were better educated or if everyone just thinks they were?
My experience having gone to both good and bad schools is that most learning takes place on your own, and the biggest difference is in the quality of people you are surrounded with. It’s the same books.
Take it in context. Many people on this board care about College football, but it would be irrelevant to bring that up in a discussion of which schools are better at educating your kids.
Sure, schools that have good research programs also tend to get higher accreditation and thus be perceived as “better”. But I would argue that doesn’t have much to do with how well they actually educate kids.
I don’t know what your Marine core example is supposed to mean, but the fact that the only way public colleges can compete with private ones is by being highly subsidized by the taxpayers backs up my argument that the private sector is better at education than the public sector.
Once again, it depends on the schools. In my neck of the woods the public school is solidly better by almost any apples apples objective measure than the private school options. The public school system is diverse along several dimensions and match student of SES status X in the public school system with student of SES X in the private school nearby and the public school student will perform better on standardized tests and college admissions, despite the fact that the private (Catholic) school has its pick of an application pool from a wide geographic area. Why do people go there? For some because of the status involved. For some for the connections. For some because they are alumni themselves or had wanted to be. For some the fear of the diversity in the public system (not exactly the same as thinking of them as riff raff btw).
I am in the Chicago area. Top performing High Schools in the area are almost all public schools, whether they be magnet schools or suburban ones.
I am sure this is the Bush family motto. But you know what? Some people do care. I guess you would dismiss those people as liberals, who have that notorious reality bias that Stephen Colbert talks about.
You are good for a laugh, anyway. If you are going to say ridiculous things like this, I might as well turn around and say that the public school gives me an infinitely better return on my tuition dollar than the private school does.
Public university tuition being subsidized is the whole point, and has been since they were founded. Do you like student debt? The reduction in the subsidies over the past couple of years hasn’t helped, has it?
As for research - guess what? Private universities do research also. One of the big advantages of private universities is that fewer students mean more can get involved in research. Almost everyone in MIT does now, I was involved 40 years ago.
Your dogmatic assertion that private=good and public = bad is laughable. The University of Phoenix is private. Nuff said.
Public funding is not to make public schools competitive with private ones, but is to make public schools affordable for more children. This is the very reason public schools are bigger and often less selective than private schools. Why is UC Berkeley better than UC Riverside? Selectivity. Which gets better students, which improves the reputation, which attracts better faculty. Research too.
I’m in Silicon Valley, and students from Stanford and Berkeley are equally in demand.
Ditto for me. The high school which serves the area of high priced homes owned by Silicon Valley workers and execs is one of the best in the state, and better than any private school on this side of the Bay. (We checked when we moved here.) My son-in-law went there. The teachers are no better and the facilities are not as good as the school in the same district my daughter went to. This high school is selective based on house prices, not entrance exams.
When the district wanted to move one of the feeder elementary schools to another high school, the parents had a fit, almost to the point of a riot. They were convinced, like our friend, that the schools made the kids smart as opposed to vice versa. What happened is that the scores of the destination high school went up with the addition of a bunch of highly motivated kids, there were more AP classes given and taken, and it all worked out.